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Transportation Businesses

3D Printed Airliner Parts Face Regulatory Headwinds (wsj.com) 74

Posted by msmash from the catching-up dept.
Some aerospace suppliers are eager to start using 3-D printing technology to turn out large, high-volume structural parts for jetliners, but U.S. safety regulators are taking a go-slow approach toward approving such production. From a report: Three-dimensional printing is a darling of the aerospace industry because it is relatively inexpensive compared with more-prevalent ways of making components. A series of announcements at the Paris Air Show expected in coming days illustrates the immense promise of airliner parts manufactured by 3-D printers -- as well as the formidable regulatory challenges confronting their widespread acceptance (alternative source). On Tuesday, officials of Norsk Titanium AS, a closely held Norwegian company that has developed a novel 3-D printing approach, will unveil a broad partnership with Spirit AeroSystems, a major subcontractor for Boeing and other industry players. Under the arrangement, Spirit sees the potential of eventually using Norsk's technology to produce thousands of different parts at 30% lower cost than traditional milling methods. However, before that can happen, the Federal Aviation Administration has to approve the overall process and certify that the cutting-edge, plasma-deposition technology is reliable enough to ensure identical strength and other properties from batch to batch. FAA officials have said they are moving cautiously, because they want to fully understand the unique technical issues.
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3D Printed Airliner Parts Face Regulatory Headwinds More

3D Printed Airliner Parts Face Regulatory Headwinds

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  • I don't blame them (Score:5, Insightful)

    by boristdog ( 133725 ) on Tuesday June 20, 2017 @02:16PM (#54655355)

    This is one area where you REALLY want to make sure you get it right.

    • Determining the safety of the plasma-deposition technology shouldn't take more than six months of carefully designed testing and comparison between 3-D Printed parts and forged/machines parts.

      But, the FAA will insist on writing a book for every step in the manufacturing of the 3-D printed device itself, then another book on every step of the 3-D printing process, then yet another book on the testing of EACH 3-D Printed part, a completely separate tracking system, etc. etc.

      If the FAA was in charge of naming

      • no one would have names until they were 12 twelve

        Perhaps not the strongest way to end a post complaining about unnecessary redundancies....

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sycodon ( 149926 )

          Ya...well, I was using Chrome and I swear it runs like a pig these days. I was lucky to get the damned thing posted.

          It reminded me of watching the 300 baud terminal server listing my COBOL application.

      • Re:Get It Right, But don't go Luddite (Score:5, Insightful)

        by khb ( 266593 ) on Tuesday June 20, 2017 @03:22PM (#54655877)

        For many classic industrial processes, we select a statistically meaningful units and test them to destruction. If the FAA is trying to fit these "one off" parts into that sort of algorithm the problem should be obvious. Each part is a "one off" and statistical reasoning about batches produced the same way don't (necessarily) apply.

        For example, perhaps the Argon supplier accidentally left in some impurities (or worse, the original testing was WITH impurities which happened to help; and the new supply is actually pure ... that sort of thing has happened in the past, and it's hell to debug!).

        • But the same material variability argument could be made for any alloy, including the steel/etc they use today. Besides, if you really want to get paranoid about a new processes, you can do things like print test coupons along side the unit(s) being manufactured in the same fabrication run. Then do chemical, impurity, etc. tests on those test coupons that were laid down at the same time as the 3D part. Do this for EVERY batch until you are convinced it is reliable. Circuit board designers do this all th

      • Determining the safety of the plasma-deposition technology shouldn't take more than six months of carefully designed testing and comparison between 3-D Printed parts and forged/machines parts.

        Maybe, but it might take years to 'carefully design' the testing to make sure it is comprehensive. The key to testing is to determine the limits of each material used, and due to the many possible configurations that's not so easy.

      • "It don't fly till the paperwork weighs more than the plane."

      • > If the FAA was in charge of naming newborns, no one would have names until they were 12 twelve

        And the infant mortality rate would be zero.

        I'm always amazed when people harp on the FAA for doing their job really well, and express their concern that doing so is complex and time consuming.

    • This is one area where you REALLY want to make sure you get it right.

      The delay in approval is not to take more time to "get it right". It is just bureaucratic inertia by career chair warmers afraid to make a decision. The tests necessary to prove the structural integrity of these parts is not particularly time consuming, and has ALREADY BEEN DONE. Now we are just waiting while the forms sit in somebody's inbox.

      • Re:I don't blame them (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Tuesday June 20, 2017 @03:05PM (#54655743)

        You have to prove that not only the sample test parts pass standards, but that the process is consistent and will always produce parts that meet standards. That's a little more time consuming.

        • You have to prove that not only the sample test parts pass standards, but that the process is consistent and will always produce parts that meet standards. That's a little more time consuming.

          Yes, it is time consuming, but it has ALREADY BEEN DONE. These parts have been thoroughly tested, have already been used in military aircraft, and have a good track record.

          You are implying that the FAA is saying "We would like you to do more testing of X, Y, and Z for issues A, B and C", when what they are actually saying is "I am retiring in two years, and I don't want to make any decision that might jeopardize my pension."

          • You do realise that the FAA *routinely* requires more testing than the military does for its aircraft certifications, right? There are two different standards involved - often a manufacturer will certify to FAA standard if they want to sell the aircraft on the civilian market (C-130, C-17 for example), and that involves additional testing beyond the military standard.

            Military aircraft have crashed because of unforeseen metal fatigue, which would have been caught under civilian regimes of testing and mainte

            • (C-130, C-17 for example),

              There are no C-17's that have been sold to the civilian market, indeed the production line is / has shut down.

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by Strider- ( 39683 )

                There was a proposed civilian variant known as the MD-17/BC-17, but it was never sold. What I don't know is how far into the approvals process Boeing/McDonnel Douglass went.

                I've flown on the C-17 a bunch of times, and as long as you're in the jumpseats on the side (and not in palletized airline seating in the middle) they're quite pleasant to fly on for a cargo plane. *MUCH* nicer than C-130s, though those have their own charm.

              • But McDonnel Douglas did market it to the civilian market under the designation MD-17, and they achieved FAA certification for it in 1997.

                http://boeing.mediaroom.com/19... [mediaroom.com]

                So my point stands.

          • Yes, it is time consuming, but it has ALREADY BEEN DONE. These parts have been thoroughly tested, have already been used in military aircraft, and have a good track record.

            Military aircraft are maintained differently than civilian aircraft. They are also designed and utilized differently. Milspec is not the end-all-be-all standard of quality many imagine it to be.

            You are implying that the FAA is saying "We would like you to do more testing of X, Y, and Z for issues A, B and C", when what they are actually saying is "I am retiring in two years, and I don't want to make any decision that might jeopardize my pension."

            And your evidence for this is what exactly? Do you have anything besides run of the mill cynicism to back up your claim? And exactly how do you figure that any decision by an FAA official would in any way endanger their pension?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by KGIII ( 973947 )

          I'd like to add something to this.

          There's a bunch of documentaries about things like jet engines. They don't just have high tolerances - they x-ray, ultrasound, and do microscopic checks of every single part (of a specific type). As in, every part is inspected eight ways from Sunday, in a rigorous looking - I can't speak for validity as it is not my domain, process and even the most trivial problem will result in discarding the part.

          They do not fuck around. They have some pretty serious QA going on.

          So, if t

  • I have zero interest in flying in an airplane using parts that have the least bit to do with the aerodynamics or structural integrity of the airplane that are rushed to market simply because they're using a Cool New Process that coincidentally happens to be cheaper.

    • That basically describes all technology ever.

      I'm kind of irked that everything is called 3D printing. Additive (deposit plastic blobs), subtractive (etch away metal), that machine where a bunch of people keep placing bricks at the top of a conveyor that then rolls down a road like a carpet (it's essentially hand-built, but the machine arranges and deposits the brick road while a bunch of people stand around just grabbing stuff out of a hopper and rapidly stacking it up straight instead of taking forever

    • ... that are rushed to market ...

      Nothing is being "rushed to market". 3D printed structural parts have been in use for more than a decade, including in military aircraft. It is proven technology.

      • 3D printed structural parts have been in use for more than a decade, including in military aircraft. It is proven technology.

        Then TFA's description of Norsk's specific process as a "novel approach" and "cutting-edge technology" seems a bit off. Are you sure it's exactly the same process that has been around for a decade plus? If not, then giving the FAA until sometime in 2018 to get their arms around it doesn't seem crazy to me.

  • I don't believe either of these articles do a great job at providing the facts we need. Obviously structural integrity is a major concern here, but where is the information on the testing? In a scarier question, has any testing been done? We have two sides of this issue. One is the industry properly testing and validating that these parts of safe and effective to use. The other is regulation and is it going to lag behind. If proper testing is done and regulation keeps this from coming to the market then we

  • Casting and milling are well understood (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Casting and milling are well understood. They have been used since the age of steam. Identifying defects in traditionally machined parts works so well that aircraft rarely have problems related to the manufacture of metal parts.

    In a 3D printed part every one of the thousands of layers is a potential failure point. To date there is no reliable way to find a single weld failure in all those thousands of layers. Once 3D printed parts have a decade of successful use in cars then will be the time to use them

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tailhook ( 98486 )

      To date there is no reliable way to find a single weld failure in all those thousands of layers.

      I'll stipulate that because I don't know enough to make an argument. Perhaps the desire to drive the high cost of aerospace manufacturing will motivate some innovation here. Shouldn't it be possible to use machine vision to analyze the build of a component in real time and capture defects? One imagines that an item built in this way could eventually be considered more safe than a traditional part.

      Anyhow, "regulatory headwinds" are fine; it isn't as if airlines are infeasible without incremental manufac

    • Re:Casting and milling are well understood (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bluefoxlucid ( 723572 ) on Tuesday June 20, 2017 @03:03PM (#54655725) Homepage Journal

      Oh holy shit, I just actually took a look at their technology.

      They're using an argon-gas atmosphere to create an effective clean room, and then rapidly depositing titanium by turning it into a charged vapor (plasma) so that it binds to the part. They basically get a solid, perfect chunk of metal roughly in the shape of the part they need, rapidly, because the atom-thick charged metallic gas sticks to the metallic substrate with no impurities between, and so doesn't create air bubbles or whatnot. It's like electroplating, in a mechanical sense, but the physics are entirely different.

      So it's titanium plated onto titanium millions of times with precision until you get what's almost a machined part, and then some quick machining. Instead of milling a block into a complex shape, you mill what looks like something a (skilled) child would make with Playdoh after being shown that complex shape into the final product.

      That's nifty. I bet it takes surprisingly-little energy, too. If you're converting metal into a plasma gas, you're essentially mobilizing atoms with close to the minimum energy required to do so. This versus forcefully crushing things or melting things, leaking heat all over the place in the process.

      • I used to do this in my lab as part of a manufacturing process for all kinds of things (and have related patents). PVD [wikipedia.org]. It takes quite a bit of power and is very slow. Too many potential problems to enumerate here, but things like impurities causing fractures in the periodic crystalline structure.

    • In a 3D printed part every one of the thousands of layers is a potential failure point.

      You are making it sound like each "layer" is an monolithic element. A 3D part is built up by layers, but the sintering is done by a spot laser that does not leave any continuous shear weakness between layers. The parts can also be annealed after forming, to make them behave more like traditional metal parts, although that is not always helpful. 3D parts can have slightly lower bulk strength, but are better at inhibiting crack propagation, which is a bigger concern in aerospace applications.

  • Sintering, not 3-d printing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wired_parrot ( 768394 ) on Tuesday June 20, 2017 @02:54PM (#54655605)
    Stop calling it 3d-printing. This is just a variation of sintering techniques that have been used for decades in the aerospace industry. While this particular method of laser sintering may be novel and require the FAA to study it before approving, sintering is a well understood metallurgical process. Given the high heat required for the process, no one is going to be home printing machine parts in their basement any time soon.

    • Given the high heat required for the process, no one is going to be home printing machine parts in their basement any time soon.

      You say that... but there are people that already smelt steel at home. [youtube.com] It's only a matter of time before a DIY DMLS machine is made. Most likely not long after someone figures out how to make laser diodes cheaply.

    • Why are you so bent out of shape about which specific methods of additive manufacturing are permitted to be called "3D printing"?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fnj ( 64210 )

        If you want to call powdered/sintered metallurgy "3D printing", you are welcome to your baby talk babble. Sintered metal dates back to at least the 1940s.

  • 'Whoa! Maybe we shouldn't have printed that replacement rudder in PLA!'

  • That Plasma Deposition and Laser Sintering hava BOTH been previously proven to produce parts up to 3x physically stronger then their standard manufacturing method counterparts, Can be made ALL ONE PIECE (even with some moving internal parts), and have so far been stress tested to provide up to 10x the standard service life of the same old-school manufactured part, This might be a bit of bureaucracy.... IMO There is "Testing" and there us using RED-TAPE to stifle innovation. Guess which one this is?

    • IMO There is "Testing" and there us using RED-TAPE to stifle innovation. Guess which one this is?

      I'll take option 'C' - total ignorance on your part.

      That Plasma Deposition and Laser Sintering hava BOTH been previously proven to produce parts up to 3x physically stronger then their standard manufacturing method counterparts

      "3x stronger" sounds impressive - but it's actually pretty meaningless. 3x stronger - by what measurement? Compression? Tension? And how does it compare in hardness or ductili

  • Just imagine if each airport had their own 3D printer so that, whenever a plane had a mechanical problem and needed a replacement part, it could simply be fabricated on the spot instead of waiting countless hours for it to be flown in from who-knows-where! This would be incredible. While of course attention to safety is warranted, we seriously need to speed up these efforts.

    • I'm pretty sure that a part could be flown anywhere in the world in a few hours vs a few days to make something and v&v it on site.

  • FAA should talk to itself (Score:3)

    by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Tuesday June 20, 2017 @03:29PM (#54655895)

    Oddly enough, nobody has pointed out that the FAA already has experience certifying 3D printed parts for flight, and in a flight regime far more rigorous than aircraft. SpaceX has already flown Falcon 9s with 3D printed engine parts, with the FAA's knowledge and approval.

    If the FAA's rocket division would just talk to the aircraft division, the certifying process might go a little faster.

    • nobody

      Given the number of posts before you that have pointed out just what you have said it's quite disingenuous to claim that nobody has pointed out something.

    • SpaceX has already flown Falcon 9s with 3D printed engine parts, with the FAA's knowledge and approval.

      You forgot to mention that's with nobody on board the vehicle, with miles of buffer zone around the launch pad, and with a trajectory deliberately directed over empty ocean. And if the rocket only explodes about 1% of the time, that's considered "good".

    • For rocket use it is currently not an unreasonable to specify inspections after less than a dozen cycles or even every cycle. For aircraft even the most basic inspection is only done every 100 hours.

      There is no reason to believe that "FAA's rocket division would just talk to the aircraft division" is not occurring. There just happens to be a question that had no need to be answered for rockets.

  • Planes prefer taking off into the wind anyway, don't they?

  • The 3D printing is new, and it would take several years of FAA to approve the parts and certify the manufacturing process. That is to be expected. FAA and certification will not move very fast.

    Having said that, the very same certification and process would become a very important factor in 3D printing dominating aircraft/nuclear engineer parts and components.

    These ares nuclear power stations and aircraft are one of the most heavily regulated for safety and compliance. 3D printing can implant sensors and

  • FAA officials have said they are moving cautiously, because they want to fully understand the unique technical issues.

    But they let Boeing put a garbage battery system on the 787 because .... Boeing is the authority. And they can be trusted to self certify.

    This 'go slow' approach may in fact have been in response to the battery SNAFU (and a few other things). But that just goes to show how the regulatory pendulum swings back and forth. In a few years, Boeing will lean on the regulators and kite string and chewing gum will pass muster. If Boeing says so.

  • After using industrial CT to review hundreds of "printed" Ti parts, the prior above comment regarding differentials from batch to batch could not be more correct. The issue is caused by a lack of control over the purity of the powder material. All it takes is are a couple of tiny impure grains, which result in a 'pop corn' effect during the processing. Each layer is not visible or inspected, so the defect becomes encased by surrounding melted material and the resulting void is now invisible. If each par

  • "Norsk" literally means "Norwegian" in Norwegian, so calling the company "Norsk" is just like calling "USA Today" just "USA".

    There are literally hundreds (if not thousands?) of companies named "Norsk ", I used to work for Norsk Hydro which is by far the largest example of the type. Even though the DNS name was hydro.com, lots and lots of English articles insisted on calling the company "Norsk".(It got started as "The Norwegian Hydro-Electric Fertilizer Company" (literal translation of the original name) ove

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